Tales of lonely trails eBook

Like an Indian, at every pause, I gazed out into the
void. How sweeping and grand the long sloping
lines of ridges from the rim down! Away in the
east ragged spurs of peaks showed hazily, like uncertain
mountains on the desert. South ranged the upheaved
and wild Mazatzals. Everywhere beneath me, for
leagues and leagues extended the timbered hills of
green, the gray outcroppings of rocks, the red bluffs,
the golden patches of grassy valleys, lost in the
canyons. All these swept away in a vast billowy
ocean of wilderness to become dim in the purple of
distance. And the sun was setting in a blaze of
gold. From the rim I took a last lingering look
and did not marvel that I loved this wonderland of
Arizona.

[Illustration: BURROS PACKED FOR THE TRAIL]

[Illustration: THE DEADLY CHOLLA, MOST POISONOUS
AND PAIN INFLICTING OF THE CACTUS]

CHAPTER V

DEATH VALLEY

Of the five hundred and fifty-seven thousand square
miles of desert-land in the southwest Death Valley
is the lowest below sea level, the most arid and desolate.
It derives its felicitous name from the earliest days
of the gold strike in California, when a caravan of
Mormons, numbering about seventy, struck out from
Salt Lake, to cross the Mojave Desert and make a short
cut to the gold fields. All but two of these prospectors
perished in the deep, iron-walled, ghastly sink-holes,
which from that time became known as Death Valley.

The survivors of this fatal expedition brought news
to the world that the sombre valley of death was a
treasure mine of minerals; and since then hundreds
of prospectors and wanderers have lost their lives
there. To seek gold and to live in the lonely
waste places of the earth have been and ever will
be driving passions of men.

My companion on this trip was a Norwegian named Nielsen.
On most of my trips to lonely and wild places I have
been fortunate as to comrades or guides. The
circumstances of my meeting Nielsen were so singular
that I think they will serve as an interesting introduction.
Some years ago I received a letter, brief, clear and
well-written, in which the writer stated that he had
been a wanderer over the world, a sailor before the
mast, and was now a prospector for gold. He had
taken four trips alone down into the desert of Sonora,
and in many other places of the southwest, and knew
the prospecting game. Somewhere he had run across
my story Desert Gold in which I told about
a lost gold mine. And the point of his letter
was that if I could give him some idea as to where
the lost gold mine was located he would go find it
and give me half. His name was Sievert Nielsen.
I wrote him that to my regret the lost gold mine existed
only in my imagination, but if he would come to Avalon
to see me perhaps we might both profit by such a meeting.
To my surprise he came. He was a man of about
thirty-five, of magnificent physique, weighing about